by Eddie Saint
‘Make chemically neutral,’ he said, quietly, to himself. He was the only one in the room, but it was a library and he had a very strong sense of following rules.
The new recruits’ Chemistry sessions had been all about poisons. Mostly it was how to kill quickly, easily and untraceably. His uncle had run additional classes on ‘Chemicals used to Paralyse’, but they were optional, and were scheduled at the same time as ‘Clever Gadgets for Administering Poisons’, so were poorly attended.
‘Is the Commander asking me to use ‘chemicals’ to make Oak Leaf ‘ineffective’?’ Ivan’s mental guest, Inspiration, was a fast worker. That solution certainly seemed to fit the definition, and why have training on it if it wasn’t to be used? He felt he was almost there already. There was just one part of the word puzzle to fit in: ‘Disarm’.
New recruits had learnt that poisons could be administered in many different and ingenious ways. Drinks were an obvious one. They had the advantage of being easily targeted (‘More tea?’) but did leave you linked to the corpse (‘Officer, call up the CCTV for the tea room.’). A poisoned umbrella tip, jabbed into a leg on a busy street, was easier to get away with, but was less reliable. You were not usually allowed to go back and have a second go if you weren’t quite sure you had succeeded with the first jab. For the best of both worlds you wanted something that was easy to target but that left you well out of the vicinity when the poisoning occurred.
A team building exercise had always been run amongst the new recruits to see which team could come up with the most ingenious solution to the Poisoner’s Problem. The winning entry in Ivan’s year had been submitted by a group calling themselves, in true student style, ‘The Knob Heads’, and it was their cunning idea that sailed back into Ivan’s mind now. The delivery device was a door knob. Everyone could be guaranteed to use their door knob to enter their house. It was a delivery device with pin-point accuracy. Smeared with a chemical nerve agent the target would receive the poison in their paw when they returned home, and by the time they were in their living room it would have travelled all the way up their arm and on to the brain. The technique was such a hit it went straight into the training manual as ‘Protocol 421(a) - for external doors’ and ‘Protocol 421(b) - for internal doors’. Those names never stuck though.
‘ ‘Dis-armed!’ ’ exclaimed Ivan, despite himself.
With a hefty dose of inspiration he had cracked the Commander’s clever word play. He was being asked to kill Oak Leaf with the classic ‘Knob Head’ protocol.
Ivan went straight to the stores to sign out the poison, then limped off into the night.
Chapter Four
SITTING BEHIND HIS desk, Tarquin Toad the Third looked up reverently at the portrait of his ancestor, Old Father Toad, the very first Toad of Toad Hall, the one who had bequeathed Toad Hall to the nation as the permanent seat of Parliament.
‘I will make you proud, Sir,’ he said aloud, and then instantly felt a little foolish, talking to a painting. But then he thought, why should he? This week was to be momentous. It would cement his place in History. It would forever put his name at the top table of famous Toads. He was ready!
The office door opened and the Prime Minister’s secretary hopped in. ‘The Leader of the Leave Campaign to see you Sir,’ he said, and then hopped back to allow the visitor to enter. Toad stood to greet his visitor, wondering just who had ended up with the thankless task of fronting a Leave campaign doomed from the outset to failure.
‘Mr Toad!’ said Weasel, striding confidently into the office. ‘How good of you to see me! It looks like none of your politicians wanted to back this dead donkey, so I’ve offered to step in and take one for the team.’
Toad kept a straight face as he extended a hand of greeting to Weasel and gestured for him to sit in the seat opposite him at the long table.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, ‘this is certainly a surprise! Most irregular.’
‘ ‘Irregular’? Yes. But ‘understandable’? Definitely!’
Toad ran this unexpected new reality around in his brain. Of course no politician with a reputation to build would volunteer for such a hopeless mission. Their ambitions would forever be tainted. And Oliver Weasel did have a certain level of recognition with the general public. It was probably open to debate whether anyone could say quite why they knew him, or what he did even, but his was at least a name folks should be able to put a face to. And this needed to be seen to be a fair fight. No point in securing a hollow victory.
‘Right, well, no time to lose, I suppose,’ Toad said, settling in to his regular, business-like manner. ‘I trust you have seen the opening polls?’ He opened the black leather binder in front of him, took out a page with a coloured column chart on it and slid it across to the new Leader for the Leave Campaign.
‘Crikey,’ said Weasel, in cheerful recognition of just how one sided the issue seemed to be out there with the voters. ‘Eight percent? So not even into double figures. Not a great start for my side, eh?’
Toad spread his hands wide and gave a little shrug. ‘Well, what can I say? To be honest, having forty two percent saying ‘Don’t Know’ shows just how little voters know, or care I suppose, about the League.’
‘Yes but still: eight percent!’ said Weasel, trying to sound more amused than anything else. ‘At least with the Tortoise and the Hare they started level.’ This was not the time to mention that he had fitted his particular tortoise with turbo booster rockets.
He’ll find out, soon enough, once it’s too late, Weasel thought.
‘Quite. Indeed,’ said Toad, enjoying the analogy. ‘Although you won’t find me sleeping on the way around the track, what?’ He laughed at his own joke, and settled back in his chair, relishing the admittedly one-sided race ahead.
‘Now don’t worry. I have a plan to make this as painless as possible. Shall I run it past you and see if you think it is fair?’
Weasel gave a little shrug and nodded.
‘You’re the boss,’ he said, and then he added, conspiratorially, ‘at least until the weekend!’ He chuckled and threw in a wink for good measure. It seemed to hit the spot. (The particular spot it hit was the soft underbelly of Toad’s ego, laced with a hint of rugger showers post-match banter. He may not have been any good at sports himself, but when it came to playing other animals Weasel was in the top division.)
Toad joined in the laughter, then shuffled his papers and decided it was time to get down to the main business.
‘Right then! First things first. Item One: Given the tight timetable I propose three days of campaigning, starting today, with a different topic chosen as the main focus for debate. Is that OK with you?’
Weasel nodded, keen not to rock the boat at an early stage.
‘Item Two: to make it a fair fight we should have spending limits. I can’t be seen to be throwing money at my campaign hand over fist if you can’t raise similar funds. Shall we set the bar at half a million?’
‘Half a million? Sounds very reasonable,’ said Weasel. ‘I’m sure I’ll be able to raise that somehow.’
‘Yes, well, if it does give you trouble we can always raid the swear box down in The Trough. Can’t have you going short.’
‘Very decent of you, Mr Toad. Very decent indeed.’
‘Item Three: Campaign Rules. Well I suppose we should go over these. They are really meant for mainstream elections but, yes, ‘by the book’ and all that.’
‘Campaign Rules?’ A quick moment of panic shot between Weasel’s ears.
‘That’s right, old chap. There’s a book of rules in the Library if you want to see the details but: don’t overspend; don’t tell lies - that’s the gist of it, anyway.’
‘Ah, I see,’ said Weasel, immediately calculating how this information might impact on the plans he had already put in place.
‘We have a committee to make sure it’s a fair fight. The fines aren’t much. We probably make more on the swear box, to be honest.’
Toad chuckle
d at his own joke, and Weasel thought it could do him no harm to join in.
‘It really is just a formality. You and I will discuss the facts and figures for each campaign topic and then we each go out and spend the day making the case for why we should stay in the LEAF League.’
‘Or ‘leave’,’ added Weasel.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Or ‘leave’,’ repeated Weasel. ‘We should both go out and spend the day making the case for why we should stay in or leave the LEAF League. That is, I think, what you meant to say.’
Toad stopped for a moment, wondering what he had missed. And then he saw it. ‘Oh, my dear old thing, I’m terribly sorry. Of course, of course. ‘…why we should stay in or leave the LEAF League’. My mistake. We must go through the motions properly, I agree.’
He looked at Weasel again as if through fresh eyes.
‘You know, it really is rather decent of you to take up the job of arguing for leaving. I think, when this is all over, we might be able to find some bit of business to pass your way. To say thank you.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Sir.’
The ‘working lunch’ that was brought in was a grand affair in Weasel’s eyes, although Toad called it ‘a simple bite’, arguing that, ‘one simply can’t go campaigning on a full stomach.’
Weasel had begun by trying a little of everything, considering it rude not to, until he had spat out something incredibly salty which turned out to be caviar, believing it to be some sort of cleaning product mistakenly left in amongst the food. Toad had been very good about it, and had offered to get chef to rustle up a different menu for the following day.
There had been a lot of talk, mostly by Toad. He had mentioned phrases like ‘a fair fight’, ‘getting expert points of view’, ‘giving voters facts’ and ‘a well informed debate’. Weasel had listened, politely, while stuffing his face (and pockets) with tasty bites, and when the working lunch was over he was handed three yellow binders full of facts and figures about Immigration in Wild Wood, hot off the photocopier in the Toad Hall Library.
Toad escorted Weasel through the lobby to the main entrance. They shook hands, warmly, and with that, Weasel turned on his heel and walked out to greet the new day, trying to keep a spring out of his step until he was a respectful distance from Toad Hall.
I HAD NOT slept well. My dreams were riddled with grotesque visions of muscle hounds riding enormous green caterpillars. To be honest it was a relief to wake up and get to my morning shift in Chandler’s.
I think Mother could tell something had taken the glide out of my stride. She cleared my favourite table and let me knock off early.
Once the sun had soaked into my fur I fired up the laptop. Overnight I had made a decision. Whether friend or foe, ‘T’ must have had some contact with Dug or he wouldn’t have known to call me ‘JJ’. Either way, opening the attachment was going to get me a step closer to Dug. I held my breath and clicked on the file.
A PDF opened. A single page. I read its four paragraphs of neatly worded prose.
I read them again.
Then once more, just in case I had missed something.
All I could make out was that it was a piece of sci-fi fan prose, about the characters, vehicles, gadgets and main plot lines of Carrington 5ive.
What was it Lenny had said?
‘Hey, talking of ‘losing contact’, what ever happened to Jay’s brother Dug? He was the first to get me into C5ive.’
Was that a good sign? Sci-fi usually left me cold, but I know Dug was a big fan. And here was a page of Carrington 5ive details.
I stared at it for a while longer. It was, at least, another link to Dug. And it wasn’t a direct threat to me, as far as I could tell. Maybe ‘T’ was a friend after all.
Although, if he was, I would have appreciated him being a little less cryptic.
I re-read the piece on C5ive once more then minimised it. As clues go it was giving me nothing, so in its place I called up a blank window.
‘Right, Mr ‘T’, you found me. Now it’s my turn. Coming… ready or not!’
I reckon you are getting to know me a bit by now. OCD? A little. No will power? Sure. Soppy? Pass the tissues. So forgive me if I think it’s time I racked up a point in the ‘Things I’m Good At’ column:
Searching.
I can dream up a hundred different ways to find stuff. Especially if its digital. So stick me on your A team if you ever need to find something. I’m serious. Don’t dick around. Give me a call. I’m your Rabbit.
‘So, Mr ‘T’, if you are a hunter I guess I’ll see you soon enough anyway, so I’m going to assume you are a friend, and if you know Dug and have hot coding skills does that put you on the Service payroll?’
I fired up a locksmith program Dug had built back in his Service days, to test the theory. The main servers were probably the most heavily protected in the world. Like a rock solid castle, bristling with security guards marching around the perimeter twenty four seven. Archers at all the windows. Throw a few piranhas in the moat for good measure. You get the picture. Even my skills wouldn’t normally get me in.
But Dug had hidden a key deep in the service logs and I turned it now. This time, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to set off a shower of alarms, or get shot at with flaming arrows. Even so, I held my breath.
A flashing cursor, white on blue, made a welcome appearance on my screen. I had my foot in the door.
Unfortunately, the door I had just opened only led to the smallest file, in the tiniest folder, a million miles away from anything sensitive. It was as helpful as breaking into the gate-keeper’s shed. But, it was the closest I was ever going to get without a badge, and one thing a gate-keeper knows is that things come in, and things go out. It was a start.
I went back to the message from ‘T’ and checked the exact time it was sent. Back at the flashing cursor I entered the time and waited… half a second. Computerised gate-keepers don’t hang around. A single match. A message sent from a Service computer at precisely the time a message was sent to me, accurate to one thousandth of a second. That was close enough for jazz. Success number one: ‘T’ was a Service agent.
Once I had one of his messages, I knew I could build a profile, if not of him then at least of his work pattern. It would be a start. I copied the sender ID and ran an enquiry for other traffic by the same sender. I figured a six month period up to today would give me a good overview to begin with. This time it took four seconds before I had a long list of activity, white digits on a blue screen, scrolling in front of me. All it gave me was ‘T’s unique ID and the time of the data pulse. It could have been a message. It could have been an online search. There was no way of distinguishing between the two. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was all I had.
I copied the data into a spread sheet and created a chart of the timings. A pattern jumped out straight away. This was a guy who kept regular hours, and worked long into the night. It looked like he didn’t get into the office until nine in the evening, give or take ten minutes, then there would be a steady stream of activity until about six in the morning, with a big gap just after midnight.
I figured that would be a meal break.
So I was looking at an agent who clearly liked to work late into the night. Probably the sort who preferred to work without distractions. He would log off at six every morning, before the early birds rolled up to the office and managers started to send out the daily round of ‘look-how-early-I’ve-started-work’ e-mails.
The pattern was really strong. Day after day it barely changed. ‘T’ was a creature of habit. Until…
I had to double check the cut off time for the data request I had sent. I had definitely requested data right up to the present, which was now six minutes ago. The time was currently ten minutes to nine, so I had all ‘T’s data up to 8.44 am.
Only there had been no activity since 2.03 am.
A BLACK SEDAN with mirrored windows slowly pulled alongside Weasel as he skipped away from Toa
d Hall, three yellow binders under one arm and pockets full of food. At first he became aware of a deep, throbbing engine and then he saw the car itself, keeping pace with him as he turned downstream towards the financial district. For a reason he couldn’t put his finger on it gave him the jitters, and he was just about to dart into PeeWit’s Outfitters, where he knew there was a handy back entrance that led into the maze of alleys that formed part of the old town, when the rear kerbside window of the Sedan began to lower and a voice said, ‘Do step inside, Mr Weasel.’
Weasel stopped in his tracks.
President Vulpine’s voice could do that.
The rear door opened ominously. Weasel gulped, loosened his tie and stooped his head in through the open door.
‘Ah… um… President Vulpine!’ he stammered.
The President’s enigmatic smile drew Weasel into the car as if on an invisible thread.
‘How nice to meet you. I’ve…er…I’ve just come from meeting the Prime Minister,’ he began.
The Fox waved a paw airily.
‘I already know this, of course,’ he said and, as if to show he wasn’t meaning to be sinister, he gestured through the back window to the receding view of Toad Hall. ‘I have been waiting for you for some time.’
‘You h… have?’ stuttered Weasel, feeling every inch the Prep School pup invited to tea with the Headmaster.
‘I thought it might be wise, given the pressing timetable of this Referendum, if we met face to face. I enjoyed reading your memo, and I’m certain there are matters I can help to hurry along, so to speak.’
Weasel paused for a moment, realised he was not in any imminent danger, and relaxed. A little.
‘Well, I must say I’m delighted to have you aboard, President. Many paws make light work, and all that.’
Vulpine gave a small smile and nodded.
‘Quite. I do so enjoy your quaint Wild Wood phrases. But time is pressing. What can you tell me?’
‘Well…’ began Weasel, and he gave Vulpine all the details of the meeting he had just left.